Postsecular Instruments of Acculturation. Czesław Miłosz’s Works from the Second American Stay

Abstract

Abstract:The article raises the question about the ways in which religious tradition can become an ally in the process of acculturation while serving the modern subject both as a springboard for innovative, creative work and as a tool of self-improvement. Czesław Miłosz's selected works from his second stay in the United States (1961States ( -1980 are analysed from the postsecular perspective which recognises religion as a full-fledged actor in the process of modern transformations that may broaden the field of artistic choice but remains vulnerable to artistic resemantizations or even profanations (Agamben). Such an analysis allows us to interpret the poem From the Rising of the Sun as a form of reconciliation of Miłosz's American and Lithuanian experience (as well as of maturity and childhood, centre and periphery, modern and pre-modern cultural formation) through textual practices inspired by his private Liturgy of the Hours. In this light, the translations of the Books of the Bible on which Miłosz worked, his novel The Mountains of Parnassus, as well as his essays from Visions from San Francisco Bay emerge as instruments of shaping the communal identity with the use of pre-existing rituals, which are, nonetheless, also negotiated in the act of writing.Keywords: modernity, postsecularism, Polish literature, migration, translation, Czesław Miłosz Dislocations that occur between villages and cities, states, continents, languages and cultures, as well as translocations of political borders that might result in a changed citizenship despite remaining in one place: these and other forms of a more often than not compulsory migration marked the life of Czesław Miłosz. The poet was a provincial tourist and a resident, a subaltern, a refugee, an embassy worker, an outcast, a pilgrim, a guest, an academic nomad and a repatriate. The diversity of this experience and its extent over time (Miłosz lived for 93 years) implies a multiplicity of communities, to which the poet might claim his right in the process of constructing his identity.He most frequently identified his experience as specific for the twentieth century and characteristic for the societies of the Central and Eastern Europe, pointing to his sense of belonging to the cosmopolitan circle of intellectuals in the first place and the Polish literary emigrées in the second (see : Milosz 1968, Miłosz 2007, Miłosz 1997. These and other auto-identification gestures, however, did not mean that he welcomed becoming subordinated to pre-existing constructs, but that he was willing to work on their critical actualisation. It is exactly this attitude that stands behind the originality, the substantial interpretative potential and the influence of Miłosz's work, leading it in various creative directions that cut across linguistic and generic boundaries. An insightful reflection on this subject is provided by Ryszard Nycz, who uses a quote from Miłosz's poem Po ziemi naszej "Gdziekolwiek jesteś, nie zdołasz być obcy" (Wherever you are, you cannot be a stranger) to identify ...